In its report at a meeting of the Ophthalmological Society held at Petrograd on May 7 the commission said "that in the Petropavlovsk and Obukhovsk hospitals there were treated up to April, 1915, 2,882 persons with cases of partial blindness due to the use of denatured alcohol, wood alcohol, varnish, etc. Of this number twenty-seven died. In the eye wards of two prominent Petrograd hospitals there were treated during the same period 138 persons with the complete loss of sight or in various stages of blindness."

The society adopted the following recommendations which were made by the commission: That a law be enacted providing for the labeling of all articles containing wood alcohol as follows: Contains Wood Alcohol-Poison"; that wood alcohol be eliminated from the liquids used in denatured alcohol and from all drugs sold without the prescription of a physician, and that the laws be made so stringent as to make it difficult to obtain wood alcohol and all liquids containing it.

All the medical societies have during the past few months been hard at work trying to get people to abstain from drinking these deadly beverages. They are making use of public lectures and special literature, which has been distributed in large quantities. There is hardly a medical congress or a session of a medical society in Russia at which the question of alcohol poisoning is not on the order of business.

As a result of the activity of the medical societies the sale of wood alcohol has already been prohibited in some places. In other places the sale has been regulated. In Kiev, for instance, the Governor issued an order providing for the sale of varnish and lacquer only in specified places, which will be under strict police supervision. The storekeepers also are compelled by the order to make an entry of each sale.

EAU DE COLOGNE AS A BEVERAGE

The following item from the Novy Mir is typical of the news items relating to the prohibition orders issued by the authorities checking the sale of eau de cologne:

"Saratov―The consumption of eau de cologne since the prohibition of the sale of liquor has become so great that the Gov

ernor of Saratov issued an order to all pharmacists prohibiting its sale without a prescription under the penalty of 3,000 roubles."

Among the many requests of pharmacists to regulate the sale of different drugs the following story appearing in the Novy Mir is typical:

"Yaroslav-The local pharmacists have applied to the State Medical Board with a request to regulate the sale of eau de cologne, tincture of valerian and other similar sought for drugs. They found it necessary to take this step in view of the large demands for these drugs, which have sprung up since the prohibition decree went into effect."

PROHIBITION IN ICELAND

Iceland is the only place in the world which is experimenting with total prohibition. A law of 1909 forbidding the importation of all kinds of alcoholic beverages containing more than 24 per cent of alcohol became effective on January 1, 1912. But the sale of the beverages imported before this date was permitted until January 1, 1915. Consequently, the total prohibition can only be said. to have existed since the last mentioned date. It is stated on the best of authority that just before the prohibition against importation became effective large amounts of spirits were brought into the country.

The law is very drastic in its many regulations. Persons who were allowed to dispose of the spirituous goods in their possession before January 1, 1915, were on that date subjected to a rigid police inspection. All the goods remaining unsold became the property of the State. Private persons having liquor in their possession on January 1, 1915, were not obliged to export it, but to state on their honor the kind of liquor and the quantity on hand. At the beginning of every year the same statement must be made until all the goods have been used up. If any one is suspected of illegal importation or sale, his premises may be searched, and if he cannot explain how he came into possession of liquor he is regarded as having transgressed the law which involves high fines, running from two hundred to one thousand kroner for the first offence, and for subsequent offences as high as five thousand kroner.

If a man is found intoxicated he must be brought before a court and is in duty bound to explain how he became intoxicated and from whom he obtained alcohol.

Especially drastic are the regulations in regard to ships calling at Iceland, in order to prevent illegal importation or smuggling.

Although the law has been in operation for such a short time, conditions in Iceland appear to be very much the same as those witnessed in our own prohibition states. The National Tidende

of Copenhagen contains this communication from Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland:

"Already more or less serious violations of the prohibition law have occurred in our city, and the city judge has plenty to do with hearing cases and imposing fines on those guilty. Illicit places of sale have been discovered and different spirituous wares have been confiscated which the dealer in question is said to have obtained from vessels regularly plying between Copenhagen and Iceland. On the whole, it may be said that smuggling flourishes as never before and in view of the total lack of revenue service in Iceland this is simply a natural consequence of the prohibition law."

It is told elsewhere with some detail how vessels load up with spirituous liquors and by remaining outside territorial waters find no difficulty in landing the forbidden goods. In short, Iceland is undergoing precisely the same experience which invariably exists when a large part of the population is unfriendly toward prohibition. How far the population of Iceland is beginning to supply their own alcoholic drinks by some form of home production is not known.

THE SWEDISH SYSTEM OF “INDIVIDUAL CONTROL"

This method of control has been practised in the city of Stockholm since February, 1914, under the name of the Bratt System, and since the latter part of 1912 in Gothenburg under the name of the Andrée System. These systems, or modifications of them, have been introduced in numerous other Swedish cities. As a result of the beneficent influence of this control, a law of May, 1915, has made it mandatory in all sales of whiskey for the whole of Sweden. Before the control becomes operative the managers of the companies having a monopoly of the sale of spirits obtain information from the police, the courts, guardians of the poor and others in regard to persons who should not be allowed to buy whiskey; the others, being over 21 years of age, are allowed to purchase, but only in certain quantities, for if full liberty of purchase existed it would only result in giving those an opportunity to obtain whiskey who should be deprived of it.

For the present, great care is exercised in determining the maximum quantity which may be bought. In Stockholm this amounts to one litre of whiskey every fifth day and in Gothenburg to eight litres per month. The reason why the limit has been kept so high is that it is necessary to proceed gradually in order not to drive people to resort to other alcoholic drinks.

But in spite of this large quantity and in spite of the fact that only by aid of the above-mentioned new law purchase from other places and foreign countries is excluded, this new system, which amounts to an individual license, has had a very wholesome influence. Since the introduction of the Bratt System in Stockholm cases of public intoxication have decreased by about one-third, although it has only existed for a year and a half and is still capable of a considerable amount of development. And while the corresponding system in Gothenburg has brought about a reduction in drunkenness offences of only eighteen per cent, the police of that city strongly emphasize that drunkenness has disappeared in a much